#TheMoneyPodcast: One easy way to make way more money

So, I’ve just done a one-to-one coaching call with someone who’s got a retail business, a fairly small retail business. He turns over about, it seems, £10,000 a month. He’s looking for ways to grow his business. He’s looking for ways to get more sales. He said that currently, he has £10,000 in the bank, but his payroll and all of his expenses are £10,500. So, he’s £500 down in a month.

So, I asked him, how many clients have you got? He said well, I’ve got about 600, something like that. I said, when was the last time you phoned them all, and tried to sell them something. He has a very specific product. They’ve all bought that specific product off him. He sells various different levels of this product. So, there’s nothing to stop him picking up the phone and phoning every single one of those 600 clients and saying, hey, I love you. Thanks for being a client. Sorry, I haven’t phone you recently to tell you that I love you. But I’m phoning you now to tell you that I love you. How are you getting on with your X product? Anything I can help you with? By the way, do you know I’ve got a deal on Y product? If you part X product, I’ll give you an extra 20 percent value on top, and I’ll give you a 10 percent discount on Y product. So, that alone would be 30-40 percent upgrade, and you can have Y product.

Now, the reason I’m using Xs and Ys specifics, because if I said what his business model was, you might know him. I didn’t get his permission to talk about his business. I’m keeping it confidential. But it just really occurred to me that, that is the easiest thing in the world to do to double, or triple, or quadruple your money. That is something in front of you that I’m pretty sure you could do. So, people listening are, either going to have a product already, or they’re not going to have a product yet. But everybody will have 50, 100, 600, or 6,000 people they could phone now. It could be your friends, your family, your contacts in Outlook, in Microsoft, and all the emails that you’ve built over the years. You could have a CRM system, because you’ve got an ongoing, or larger business with proper customer relationship management.

But as an ongoing practice, I’d say every 1 to 3 months, you should be or someone in your team should be calling all your clients every single one. I would call them, and go in there with, how are you getting on? Is everything okay? Is there any feedback we need? Is there anything I can help you with? Because you’ll learn something about your business, if you phone every single one, even if you didn’t sell them something. Of course, if you phone, because you care, because you want to help them, and then you help them, you’re much more likely to be able to sell them something. So, you could see it as a courtesy call, if you like. But if you get that chance on that call, then make them an irresistible offer for an upgrade, or a new product, or a swap product. I’m absolutely gobsmacked that Mercedes, and Lamborghini, and Porsche, and Audemars Piguet, and SME and FACT and all these companies that I buy, very high-end equipment of. I’m gobsmacked they’re not phoning me every 6 months, because if my Speaker Manufacturer phone me and say, hey, we’ve got the… if they did a PMC Fact 16, and your Fact 12, sir, £12,000. Well, I can give you £8,000 for them, and the new Fact, sir, is £16,000. So, for an upgrade of just £8,000, you can get the top of the range Speakers that we have. I’m pretty easy to sell to. I’d probably go for that. So, why aren’t you doing it?

Okay, so, you’re not doing it, because you haven’t thought about it. All right. So, now, you know. So, do it.

The next thing, is, you get busy. So, schedule it in your diary every 2 months to do a courtesy call all around, all of your clients. The next reason you may not be doing it, is because your organisation is too big. That’s absolutely fine. You shouldn’t be doing it. Your Head of Sales should be doing it, or your Head of Customer Care should be doing it, and you should be checking that they’re doing it.

Why else? Why are you might not be able to do this? You haven’t got a product yet. So, what you do, is, phone everyone who is a customer, or could be a customer. You say to them, hey, what would you like me to do to offer you that could help you? You literally ask them, what problems they would like solving. Now, that might sound like, I’m putting the cart before the horse. Or, you just phone anyone in your network, and just touch base. You phone your mate from Uni. You phone a customer who was someone 10 or 15 years ago in a different business that you worked in. Just phone up, say, hey, it’s Rob. I know it’s been a long time. This happened, I thought of you. Just thought, we’d catch up how you’re getting on.

Now, you actually might be best not to sell something at that point. But if you’ve built the relationship back somewhat, you’ve built a little bit of a bridge. You’ve connected. You’ve had a chat with them. Then the next call, when it’s time, when you’ve built your product or service, because you know what, if I didn’t have a product or a service, but I was starting up, but I wanted one, or I wanted to make more money, I’d probably want to do a 2 or a 3-call strategy before I sold to someone, anyway. So, that first call I probably shouldn’t have anything to sell. By the time I did the second and third call, I’d want them warmed up. I want them to know that I care. So, I phone them up. I build some relationship with say, let’s say, you’ve got 100 people on your contacts list. You phone them, how are you doing? How you’re getting on? Anything? What are you up to these days? Oh, did you know that I’m doing this? Yeah, yeah, I kind of not really launched it just yet, but that’s what I’m doing. You just proceed, you know get it in their awareness. Because, if you’ve done a hundred of those calls, and you know that the second or the third call, you can sell a product or service, that’s going to make you go out there, and create that product or service.

Now, the thing I told this chap who I just did the one-to-one call with, that excites me, about one of my businesses. So, I have properties, which are very physical and tangible. You know, they’re bricks and they’re mortar. It’s sort of like retail, but it’s very heavy and illiquid, a big overhead. But intangible, ethereal, information-based product, so maybe, ecommerce or training and education, or mentorship, or masterminds, or you do coaching – all of those kinds of ethereal intangible non-physical product are quick and easy to start. You could get them done in a week. You could write a course on the thing that you know, or you’ve got experience in a week. I give you a little example, because I just like to think of random example, just to prove to you that it’s easy.

So, I honestly honour this upgrade path on my Hi-Fi system at the moment. You might have noticed me talking about it a bit more. I’ve made the naïvest assumption, that the more money you spend as long as you check the reviews online, and you see general opinion, the more money you spend, the better equipment that you get. So, I was demoing a new Record Deck. It was above £15,000 Record Deck. At the time, when I was about to buy this Record Deck, and I really like the sound, my main Hi-Fi guy, a good friend of his had his Deck for sale. His Deck was a better Deck. I look at all the reviews – better cartridge, better Preamp, Phono Stage, sorry. So, it was maybe nearer to £20,000. A deal I’ve got on the £20,000 was the same as the deal I’ve got on the £15,000. It’s a better system. A more expensive system, but a higher regarded Hi-Fi equipment. So, I went and bought the higher-end system. He came. He delivered it, installed it. I put it on. And I could not get on with the sound. It was bright. It was sibilant. It was light. It was not wise as I used to. Like, it gives you a headache. I could not get used to the sound.

The lesson I learned, is, no matter what type of user, no matter what equipment you think is better, you have to demo it. You have to demo it on your system, because one Preamp, or Power Amp, or a pair of Speakers, or cartridge, or arm, or Record Deck, or Phono Stage, or even the cables can make a huge difference. So, if someone could have given me a bit of advice and guidance on how to not go through the process of spending £20,000 on a Record Deck, and it turning up, I mean, I’m not enjoying it, I would probably have paid for that advice, because that would have saved me the 5 grand I’ve overspent.

Now, as it turns out, I bought it from a guy who I’ve got contact with, and I can switch it around. Ah, end up changing the cartridge, and it’ll be fine. But I’ve spent a lot of time, I’d possibly, wasted some money. So, I just thought there, if someone had created some kind of, just even like, a book, or an ebook, or an audio programme on how to properly demo an equipment, and how even the cables or even just one cartridge can make a huge difference, or if you think it’s the cartridge, but it’s actually the Phono Stage, I probably would have bought that.

So, the reason I’m telling you that, is, you might be into public speaking, or property, or you might already know what your business model is, in which case you need to create training programmes around it. I mentor someone who’s got various hairdressers. He’s got a few of the businesses around the Wales area. Now, he’s putting a training business around training people how to cut hair. Then of course, once he trains them up, he says, he’s going to employ them. So, he gets a double win there. He’s got a training business that he can charge for. Then once they’re trained at a level, he’s basically got a good recruitment funnelling pipeline process. So, that’s a double win.

Now, Toni & Guy, they’ve a huge business model, not just around the retail, but around the training and the product. So, you can pretty much create a training programme around anything. Look at Cesar Millan. He just knows how to talk to dogs. Yet he’s got huge, and popular, and famous around that. So, if you haven’t yet got a business or any products or a load of clients, phone up everyone you know. Build a bit of a rapport. Ask what they’re up to. Tell them what you’re setting up. Say, once it’s launched-, is it okay to give him a call in a few weeks? Then of course, say yes, even if they may know. Bang, and then in a few weeks when you’ve got your product there, do it.

So, making money is not hard. We put a lot of things in the way. You know, we think that oh, we need staff. Oh, we need premises. Oh, we need some magic formula. We need a secret. I mean, yes, I’m all into leverage. But sometimes, you just have to pick up the phone, not the email by the way. When I gave this advice, pick up the phone, and phone every one of your clients. You said, ah, well, yeah, at the moment, I’m putting all my customers into a CRM system. I probably need to email them some kind of special offer. NO! PICK UP THE PHONE. It’s something that we seem to do a lot less nowadays. You’re going to get much more of a response straight, and a likelihood of being able to convert a sale.

But let’s say, you’re doing 10 grand a month, not picking up the phone and calling any of your customers. If you pick up the phone and call your customers, you could easily double and triple that. I don’t normally make these claims lightly. You know, I’m normally pretty balanced. I don’t like massive 10X and all of that stuff. But if you’re doing 10 grand a month, without picking up the phone and speaking to a client, or trying to tell your existing clients new product, or phoning new clients, then could you take over from 10 to 20 grand in 1-2 months. Easily.

Now, you’ve got all your current overhead, fixed and variable on that 10 grand a month. So, like the example of the chap that I spoke to, he was bringing in 10 grand a month. It costs him 10.5 grand a month. So, his overhead was 10.5 grand a month. He was losing 500 quid a month. But if he works from 10 grand to 20 grand, that extra 9.5 grand is virtually all profit other than the increased phone bill and his increased Red Bull and energy drinks he needs to get on the phone, and burn the midnight oil. And that’s it.

So, you’ve done all that work to get virtually no margin. You don’t have to do a lot more work to double your profit, triple it. In fact, let’s reverse that, and let’s say that the person I phoned, he was 10,000 overhead and 500 profit. So, he’s 500 down. But let’s say, it was 500 up. So, on 10.5 grand, he was making 500 quid. Now, if he doubled that to 20 grand, on 10 grand he’s making 10 grand. So, he’s taken his profit margin from 5 percent to 100 percent with virtually no extra cost, no extra overhead, and just picking up the phone, making sale calls.

Now, you could say yeah, but that’s a lot of time, or I’m not a salesy kind of person. So, get someone else to do it, if you haven’t got time. Get someone to do it, and pay them a very low basic, and a very high commission. Share the love, and share the money. Get them motivated to do it. BUT GO AND DO IT.

So, that’s a bit of a rant, but I just felt compelled. Sometimes, we make it a lot harder than it is. Sometimes, you do just need to pick up the phone, and call all your customers, and sell them some stuff. By the way, I expect my phone to start ringing some more. You want to sell me some stuff, and that’s okay, because you go straight to answerphone.